


petrichor

by thepointsdonotmatter



Category: Hannibal (TV), Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, Background Relationships, Crossover, Flashbacks, M/M, squint for Alana/Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 10:41:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/899368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepointsdonotmatter/pseuds/thepointsdonotmatter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will, Hannibal, and their jaeger: and the next mission.</p><p>Fill for this <a href="http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/2676.html?thread=4652404">kink meme prompt:</a> Will finally finds out Hannibal's the Ripper when they drift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	petrichor

It’s an old story in the Shatterdome: every day feels like the end of the world.

Will is desperate and confused in a way the grey concrete of his room can’t contain. He dreams of crushed cities, kaiju bleeding blue from ruined limbs, dead girls impaled against antlers, lungs leaking onto a dinner plate. Plasma cannon blasts meld into knocks and he blinks sweat out of his eyes.

It’s Hannibal, of course it’s him. “Category 3,” he says, when Will turns the hatch and cracks the door open.

Will stares at the space next to Hannibal’s head, a poor man’s greeting. He nods, barely, makes to turn away.

“Walk with me,” Hannibal says.

Will lets out a choked laugh, lost in the thrum of footsteps and voices. For a moment, he wants to pluck those words from the air, store them in the hollow concavity of his chest. He doesn’t know if they will restart or kill his heart. 

Words are nearly useless these days.

“Please,” Hannibal tries, another empty burst of breath and they both know it, butterfly kisses bouncing off skin, a weak punch to armored jaws.

“Okay,” Will says, but he doesn’t know what to make of it.

\--

_The first time they drift Will disengages and pitches forward onto his hands and knees, gasps fogging up his helmet. He raises his hands and expects to find them covered in blood. Smells and tastes, amplified. Something dirty polluting his veins. It can’t be erased._

_Hannibal stands above him, waiting, he’s very still. Will throws the first punch, all wrath and pain, like he wants to kill him – but then, he was just in Hannibal’s mind, he knows the other man would not mind killing him, either._

_The slight upward curl of Hannibal’s lip is disgusting. Worse, Will knows what’s behind it. It takes three men to pull him away, his knuckles aching and bruised._

\--

They are roughly the same height, but Hannibal exudes more presence, even now. Will watches the sway of his back, shirt pulled taut over broad shoulders. Expensive suits and wine glasses have been pulled out from under this world, and the strong lines of Hannibal’s arms are exposed.

Sometimes opera music fans out from Hannibal’s room at night, ethereal and ghostly. But the past in Baltimore was uprooted a long time ago. His hair is cut shorter now. Hannibal’s too. They had not planned it, but somewhere amidst the mounting kills it had simply happened, almost subconsciously. 

They approach the cockpit, and déjà vu. Will can’t remember what day it is, what year. The walls of the Shatterdome are static. He knows he existed long before the kaiju attacked: he is older than most of the other pilots. And yet it is less painful to walk alongside Hannibal, to fight, to drag the visceral satisfaction into his sleep. 

It is not comforting, though. Very few things still are.

Pentecost is a military man, impassive. Will has come to expect nothing less of him.

Jack won’t look him in the eye anymore.

\--

_“You can’t be serious.”_

_“Agent Crawford. Respectfully – I need him.”_

_Jack laughs so hard he covers his mouth and the mocking gap in his teeth. “I need him to be locked up.”_

_Herc looks hesitant, but when Pentecost nods at him he unlocks the handcuffs; Hannibal stretches languidly._

_“You talk as if life will resume,” Pentecost continues. “I’m saying the end of humanity is coming sooner.”_

_“He’s a monster. A murderer,” Jack spits out, hackles raised._

_“And yet, Will and I are drift compatible.” Hannibal says it quietly, but there is a feral energy coiled in his stance, and a dare._

_The Drift does not lie, and Will makes no move to defend himself, hunched in the corner: Jack’s pained expression wants him to, he knows, but—he’s already been stripped down to core memories and instincts; they both have. Even now, his fingers twitch, longing to move in tandem again._

_Requiem Hart looms behind the glass. Mark 4, blades mounted on her back, cannon protruding from one shoulder: dark and lethal and beautiful._

\--

It’s an addiction. Will doesn’t want to admit how the Drift is easier every time. It settles into his bones. The litany of screaming men and women, murders in hospitals and woods and fields, the crinkle of plastic suits and scalpels.

They complement each other perfectly. Like bygone days in boatyards, Will is all harsh angles and raw emotion, fighting to re-assert himself; his empathy cuts clean paths for them to follow. Hannibal is a powerhouse of control and deadly efficiency behind his placid mask, yearning for blood to be spilt. 

They take down the kaiju in a matter of minutes, knee deep in the ocean waters; the adrenaline rides through Will for hours afterward. He can’t stop the brief glance at Hannibal. The other man smiles, electric, and Will shivers. 

\--

_Hannibal kisses the back of Mako’s hand. He nods at Pentecost. He keeps his distance from the other pilots, a mutual respect of sorts. By extension, they allow Will his own niche; he is as alone as Hannibal is._

_Will knows he has thought of eating them all, so he says, gesturing to the security cameras lining his room, “This isn’t atonement.”_

_“No,” Hannibal agrees. “It’s duty.”_

_“We’re not soldiers.” He can still remember the scent of Alana’s perfume. The feel of blue latex gloves as he turns over evidence. He tells himself he isn’t scrabbling around in the dark: there’s a way out._

_Hannibal raises an eyebrow. The shadows cut his face into jagged pieces, cheekbones set alight. “Aren’t we?”_

\--

Barely two months later and there’s the alert of a Category 4. 

Jack stops him in the hallway, grim, and says, “Let Striker take this one.”

Will pulls away with a sneer, flexing, and Jack staggers back as if he’s been struck, like he’s fading away from his field of vision, turning into just another small cog. On some level Will already understands this development, and he isn’t surprised. Fear makes him rude: he wonders what war has turned him into.

“If Alana were here, what would she think of you?” Jack asks after him, throwing a hook into his back. 

Will used to ask himself the same question, too many times to count. He’s not lying when he tells Jack he doesn’t care anymore.

\--

_The pen bursts, ink pooling into the sheets and over the letter he’d tried to start, the greeting with half-written names._

_Dear ~~Ala~~ _

_~~Dr. Bloom~~_

\--

The roar of the kaiju envelops them, rattling the earth. A horrible wrenching of metal. The left side of the Requiem goes cold, rams a fiery javelin through Will’s body. It’s worse than losing time, or blinking back images of human-made angels: it’s a physical and mental shatter of agony. He falls back to the Drift, tries to fight pain with pain: the famine of Hannibal’s childhood, the steely glint of his kitchen, terrified gasps of a nameless stranger. 

It is not enough.

Hannibal is yelling his name. There’s the desperate whir of the plasma cannon loading, and then a surge of fear through the Drift, fear and worry and something else—

Another jolt throws them backward. Will blacks out. 

\--

He wakes to silence; not the silence of the neural bridge, but the absence of words, an awkward blemish as if he’s just missed the corner of someone’s coat passing by the doorway. He’s in the medical bay. No more than a couple hours could have passed, he’s still clad in the same clothes. Will pushes himself up onto his elbows: he seems to be in one piece, at least – he doesn’t know how to feel about that. He drinks from the water cup next to him instead, stalling.

Pentecost enters the room a few minutes later. Will thinks it is a formality, and nothing more, until he looks closer. 

“Hannibal finished off the kaiju by himself,” Pentecost says. Blunt. “It was only seconds after you lost consciousness, so you didn’t miss much.”

Will is not keen on reliving his embarrassing display of weakness. But there’s a weary, cautious tilt to the marshal’s posture. It’s reminiscent of Jack when he used to shape out the phrase _Chesapeake Ripper_ , talk about Miriam Lass: the face of regret. It makes him pause; he reaches back into his scrambled memory.

“He felt…” Will begins. 

It’s like someone throws a bucket of cold water on him. He doesn’t finish the sentence, and Pentecost doesn’t try to stop him as he clamors from the bed and out the door. 

\--

Hannibal is perfectly put together except the large bruise marring his cheek, and it is almost automatic, the way Will reaches out and smoothes a thumb over it. Neither of them flinch, but they still regard each other warily. It's not a matter of figuring out what happened: rather, how they will proceed.

“I felt it,” he says, feeling Hannibal’s jaw click indelicately. “Right before I blacked out.”

A huff of breath, amused: Hannibal inclines his chin, neatly maneuvering out of his grasp. Although drifting breaks through all the runic barriers they build, decimating hours of psychiatry, it still doesn’t temper Will’s sheer frustration at the other man. He grabs Hannibal by the hip and _pulls_ , baring his teeth. He’s half-hard already.

“Well? This is what you want, right?” He reaches down, cupping Hannibal’s cock.

The hand that comes up and wraps around his throat is not exactly expected, but then Hannibal surges forward, kissing him roughly, angrily. He draws blood and Will groans. He’s thinking of the way a kaiju’s guts look when they streak onto buildings. The way Requiem’s blades cleave flesh and armor alike. The way the corners of Hannibal’s smiles hold macabre secrets: this is one of them. 

Somehow they make it to the bed. Will is still sore from the kaiju fight, and Hannibal’s grip is bruising, but it’s exactly what he needs. He arches his back, panting, obscenely loud. It’s the end of the world. There are no flowery words in a hand sealed envelope and promises of better days: only spaces in between blows and near death. This is what survival must taste like, he thinks, as Hannibal drives into him. 

 

 

He idly imagines next kaiju they will slay together. Pentecost said something once, in the beginning—

“Creating monsters to fight monsters,” Hannibal says.

Will stares up at the grey concrete and laughs, breathlessly, and he fits a lopsided kiss against Hannibal’s neck.

**Author's Note:**

> "Hart" is an alternative word for stag. So...yes, Requiem Hart is basically my fancy, slightly more sophisticated way of saying ~~swiggity swag the~~ Nightmare Stag.


End file.
